Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
initiated, funded, and managed by champions belonging to one or more part-
ners. By working through the BIG Health Consortium (and accepting BIG
HEAS), a partner has access to consortium members and specialized capabili-
ties provided by those members. In particular, they have access to various
project action groups that provide a mechanism for other partners to self-
identify their willingness to support or participate in a project and they have
access to the IT leadership group that provides assistance in developing the
IT architecture for the project.
Several BIG Health projects are already underway, bringing novel capabili-
ties to biomedical research. These include the Health of Women (HOW)
project, an online cohort study of unprecedented scope, and project Athena,
another long-term study that has the potential to revolutionize the treatment
of breast cancer in the United States. The HOW study is being spearheaded
by the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation (DSLRF) in cooperation with
the City of Hope, HealthCare IT, and NCI CBIIT. Leveraging the DSLRF
Army of Women and caBIG developed capabilities, the HOW study was able
to obtain the fi rst report on almost 30,000 women in a single month. Over the
next several years, these women will continue to receive questionnaires about
their health and lifestyle choices, while additional capabilities to capture
images and genetic data will be integrated from the existing caBIG toolkit.
Project Athena will similarly follow a cohort of women, in this case women
who wish to participate that receive regular breast care within the University
of California system. Women who chose to join the cohort will have additional
biospecimens collected for the purpose of genetic testing, and these results
will be aggregated with long-term disease status, images, and so on, to provide
improved risk and outcomes assessments for physicians.
17.9
CONCLUSION
The cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) has demonstrated that it is
possible to bring together a large, diverse community of biomedical research-
ers using information technology. This achievement required several key ele-
ments: a shared value proposition (in this case translational research and a
learning health care system), a neutral party that could act as an organizer
(the NCI), a policy of openness, and support from leaders and researchers
throughout the community. The caBIG experiment was considered quite
radical when it was initiated in 2004, advancing the cutting edge in both tech-
nology and community building. The program and the cancer research com-
munity still seek to remain on the cutting edge: continuously improving its
infrastructure and tools and constantly expanding the boundaries of the cancer
research community. To support this, caBIG is working with colleagues at the
American Society of Clinical Oncology, the NCCCP program, and vendors to
defi ne a specifi cation and open-source reference implementation for an oncol-
ogy extended electronic health record (caEHR) that meets caBIG interoper-
Search WWH ::
Custom Search